


like my heart longs for an ocean

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, because i tried and failed to smut, rated m for mild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 08:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16740346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Within minutes of meeting, Rey Niima and Kylo Ren immediately confront each other for having theaudacityto be biologically compatible.Within weeks, they start exploring that compatibility.Within months, it turns into something more.This is the story of them getting their shit together, one step at a time.





	like my heart longs for an ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from The Civil Wars' _From This Valley_.

The arm tucked under her pillow has gone numb.

Rey lifts her head, stretches out her arm and wiggles her fingers until the unpleasant pins and needles sensation fades. Next time, she thinks, she’ll sprawl out on top of him; it’ll probably be much more comfortable that way. _Next time_ , she thinks, and promptly stops herself.

There can be no next time.

To keep herself grounded in the present she presses closer to him, sighs in contentment as Ben’s arm curls tighter around her in return so that his chest is flush against her back. Liquid heat floods her as he hooks one leg over hers and inadvertently pushes deeper into her, prompting him to muffle a groan against her neck.

“Again?” Rey asks incredulously as more cum trickles down her thigh to join the damp spot pooling underneath them. Ben closes his lips around the tender gland on her neck in response, sucks on it as he does his best to thrust into her with what limited mobility he has. The slow drag of his knot against her sensitive walls draws a low moan out of her as her muscles flutter around him, an instinctive reaction to keep him inside her.

Obviously her body hasn’t gotten the memo, because they’ve been tangled together for a good while now and Rey wants nothing more than for this to be over with so that she can throw his clothes at him, kick him out of her apartment, and pretend that this never happened when they see each other at work tomorrow. Because as great as this has been, as earth-shattering as they are together…

“How long has it been?” she sighs, bats Ben’s hand away when he goes to rub at her clit. That’s how he got her to agree to a second round hours ago – riling her up while they waited for his knot to go down, leaving her wanting as he made himself at home in her kitchen, keeping her on edge as he urged her to refuel. But that was before the sun went down, before she realized how easy it would be to let him stay the night so that they can fall into an endless pattern. 

Ben huffs into her neck, his warm breath ghosting against her gland, and the part of her that only comes to life around him urges her to take his hand, to guide him back to where he wants to be, to make up for upsetting her Alpha. _This_ is exactly why there can be no third round, no next time.

“Longer than ever before,” he admits, presses his palm into her abdomen with enough pressure to make the both of them twitch. God, he’s right there, his hand over the head of his cock with only her stomach between the two, and with heat crawling up her spine and flooding her cheeks she remembers fawning over the fit of him, keening and sobbing and babbling _Alpha so big so good oh god I can see you inside me–_

He sighs, lips brushing against her temple as he brings up the forbidden topic. “You know what this means, Rey–”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she warns and pleads in the same breath, inches as far away from him as possible so that she doesn’t have to feel his racing heart against her back. The fact that his body refuses to let go of hers doesn’t have to mean anything. None of it does.

“Just…” Rey closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. She’s upsetting him, _hurting_ him, and her stupid Omega hormones aren’t the only ones unhappy with the notion. As much as she _hates_ him sometimes, she doesn’t actually want to hurt the man who makes her heart race, makes her blood sing, makes her want to give it all up for even the slightest possibility–

But she’s come too far for that, worked too hard to risk it. “Just don’t,” she whispers, and of course that’s the exact moment their bodies decide to finally, _finally_ let go.

“Okay,” Ben murmurs, presses one final kiss to her temple before he wordlessly gets out of bed. Her room feels unusually cold without his warmth curled around her, and when the door clicks shut behind him two minutes later, Rey tells herself the odd feeling in her chest is her lungs shaking, not her heart sinking.

 

* * *

 

The first time Rey meets Ben Solo, she immediately excuses herself to the bathroom to splash a gallon of cold water on her face and waste a shit ton of tissue dabbing at her inexplicably drenched underwear.

She’s been antsy all morning, just the slightest bit off and on edge and oversensitive, and everything falls into place when Leia emerges from her office with a tall, brooding hulk of an Alpha by her side and introduces the team to their newest addition. Rey is forced to just _sit there_ , pressing her legs together and praying no one can smell her, while Leia and the inconsiderate asshole move ever closer to her cubicle as introductions are made. She jumps out of her seat the minute Leia turns to her, greets her boss and exchanges brief pleasantries with the newbie even as his scent floods her senses, and then promptly announces that she needs to pee before she scurries away.

A ton of cold water and a roll of toilet paper later, Rey emerges from the bathroom with a wince on her face as she relives her awkwardness on a mental loop. Thankfully, she’s quickly snapped out of it by a new distraction. Unfortunately, that new distraction proves to be–

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Ben Solo hisses, nostrils flaring as he crowds into her personal space and forces her to back up until she hits the wall.

“ _Me_?” Rey demands incredulously, shoves at him with both her hands and makes the executive decision to ignore the fact that she can feel herself literally _dripping_ after less than two seconds of physical contact. “What the fuck is wrong with _you_? What kind of arrogant, selfish Alpha _asshole_ walks around without taking blockers–”

Ben crosses his arms – _massive_ – over his chest – _broad_ – and glares at her. “Very funny _. I’m_ not the one out in public without suppressants, _Omega_.”

She hates, hates, _hates_ being referred to by her designation, has even gained a reputation for pulling some pretty violent stunts whenever someone dares to reduce her identity to a genetic label. But the utter ridiculousness of his accusation coupled with the low growl in his voice sends Rey reeling, and without a moment’s thought she’s ripping her blouse free from her skirt and holding it up to show him the silvery scar at her hip. “Implant, you fucker. Just because _you’re_ not taking the appropriate precautions–”

“I am,” Ben whispers, sounding miles away as his wide eyes hone in on her implant mark, the one that proves she’s on the strongest suppressants available. It feels like a small eternity before he finally tears his attention away from her bare skin to look up at her again. “I am,” he repeats slowly. “On blockers. Three times a day.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Rey knows she’s probably staring and gaping at him like a fool, but wiping the dumb goldfish expression off her face becomes the least of her concerns as his admission rings in her ears and bounces around her skull and settles into her veins.

“But we still…” she gestures vaguely between them, thinks of the slick gathering between her thighs and the way he’s breathing through his mouth as if that’s any better, as if he can’t taste her in the air, as if they aren’t going crazy for each other even with the strongest possible suppressant and a triple dosage of blockers between them. “We can still…”

Ben squeezes his eyes shut, takes a step away from her. “Yeah,” he says on a shaky exhale.

She presses her back to the wall, tries to make herself as small as possible. “That’s… that’s not normal.”

He laughs. It’s curt and bitter and barely even counts, but _god_ does it make her toes curl. “You don’t say, sweetheart.”

And _that_ , oh that seals her fate even as Ben backs away from her, puts enough distance between them that she couldn’t reach for him even if she wanted to. “We should stay away from each other,” he suggests, his voice firm and resolute even as his eyes plead for her to say otherwise.

“Good idea,” Rey forces herself to agree in a breathless voice that sounds nothing like her own.

“Right,” Ben nods, moves away from her a little bit more. “Okay, good,” he mumbles, and promptly turns on his heel to get the fuck away.

Even as a long-dormant part of Rey’s body cries out at his departure, a bigger part of her knows that he won’t be able to stay away for long.

 

* * *

 

There’s a next time, and a time after that, and a time after that.

The fourth time Ben rolls away from her to get dressed and leave, Rey surprises the both of them by jumping out of bed to wrap her arms around him from behind. Ben stills, his shirt clutched in one hand, and she presses her lips to his spine in a request she’s not ready to voice.

He hears it anyway, drops his shirt and comes back to bed for the rest of the night, and when she wakes up in his arms the next morning Rey finds she’s a little less scared of this thing between them now.

After the tenth time they start leaving things at each other’s places, and on nights when she’s denied herself his company she sneaks a shirt out of the drawer she’s started thinking of as _his_ and goes to sleep drowning in his scent.

The twenty-seventh time marks three months together, as well as the last time Rey allows herself to keep count. A good thing, probably, because after that they spend more time together than apart, and while Ben will never stop being an overwhelming, all-eclipsing, larger-than-life presence, she starts getting used to him, starts learning how to look past the eclipse to see that everything else still exists. The fact that everything else _does_ still exist, that being with him doesn’t automatically cancel out a lifetime without him, allows her to put the last of her lingering fear to rest.

Seven months after she first showed him her implant scar, Rey sighs and presses closer to Ben as his thumb traces circles over the silvery mark. It’s the Alpha in him tugging his lips into a frown against her shoulder, she knows, but still–

“I’m supposed to replace it next month,” she murmurs unthinkingly, warm and content and sore in all the best ways.

Ben’s thumb stills, and moments later is replaced by his hand curling around her hip, fingers applying the slightest bit of pressure to dig into her skin. Rey thinks she can hear an audible gulp as he considers her words, and she closes her eyes to resist the temptation of turning around to gauge his reaction.

“Are you going to?” he asks an eternity later, voice hushed as the pad of his thumb starts moving over her scar again.

Rey shrugs; it’s easier to feign nonchalance when she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “I don’t know,” she says casually. “They don’t advise getting the implant more than three times, and this is already my second. Something about causing permanent damage if I don’t let my body go through heat, I think.”

Again a hand gripping her hip, almost urgently. “When was the last time you… I mean, do you usually… you know, with someone?” he trails off weakly, the crux of the matter hidden in a barely-audible whisper.

Rey shrugs off his arm, finally turns around and props herself up with an elbow sinking into the mattress. Ben can barely meet her eye, and what little moonlight there is illuminates the barest hint of a flush on his cheeks. She doesn’t blame him for asking, though. People who don’t believe in more, who aren’t interested in more – people like the person she was when they first met – are known to enter long-term arrangements for the sake of convenience. Some arrangements become more, some don’t, but nearly all of them turn personal and meaningful in their own way after a period of time.

At some point between their second and third time, Rey had actually considered asking Ben if he’d be willing to enter such an arrangement with her. Now, she brings her free hand up to his jaw and gently guides his eyes to her.

“Never,” she admits quietly. “I’ve never…” wanted to, with anyone else. Mated Omegas tell her there’s nothing like it, that you don’t truly understand your Alpha’s love for you until they’ve seen you through heat and cared for your every need. Forums for unmated Omegas tell her that it’s transcendent, that nothing else will ever come close. But that kind of vulnerability, that kind of trust… there’s a reason she’s never, _ever_ allowed herself to have a heat since her first one ten years ago, when she presented at the very late age of seventeen.

And yet – “I didn’t have anyone, before,” Rey whispers, puts it out there and immediately hides her face in Ben’s neck under the pretense of nuzzling his gland.

A low, content sound rumbles from deep within his chest, and he cards one hand through her hair until she pulls away from his sensitive skin. Ben gently rolls them over so that he’s looming over her, so that she’s pinned underneath him with nowhere to go.

Rey minds it a lot less than she should, than she would’ve even six months ago.

“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, and _god_ , the tenderness in his eyes, his voice, his touch – how did she ever think they’d be able to stop after just once? “Are you saying…?”

She loves the way Ben holds her face like the most precious thing in the world cupped in that massive hand of his, but right now it means Rey has to look him in the eye and tell him yes, yes she’s saying she wants him to fuck and feed her through her heat, she wants and trusts him to care for her when she can’t. “I mean,” she licks her dry lips, darts her gaze down to his throat. “You don’t _have_ to–”

Ben laughs, a low huff of amusement that draws her eyes back to him. “Of course I have to, Rey,” he tells her with a smile, shaking his head at her fondly. “It’s an Alpha’s responsibility to care for his ma–”

He catches himself just in time, stares at her with wide, terrified eyes until Rey surges up to kiss his fear away. Some words can never be taken back, and they both know exactly what he was about to say, what he was about to imply. And yet…

Of course Rey isn’t ready, probably won’t be for a good long while yet, but it’s nice to know that it – that he – will be waiting for her when she is. For now, though–

“I’ll get it taken out, then,” she whispers against Ben’s lips, wraps her legs around him as one hand reaches down to guide him into her. “The implant, I mean.”

“Just let me know when,” he says, and it’s the last coherent sentence between them for a while.

 

* * *

 

It takes two weeks for their luck to run out.

Leia calls a floor-wide meeting, and all twenty-three of them squeeze into Conference Room 2, which is standing room only by the time Ben arrives. Of course Rey, one of the lucky few who’d arrived early enough to snag a seat, is sitting just five feet away from the door. And of course Ben chooses to just close the door behind him and lean against it instead of venturing further into the crowded room.

For the life of her, Rey cannot figure out what the meeting is about. Leia stands on the opposite end of the room, going through slides that Poe dutifully changes for her, but even the big, bold headers on the screen seem to blur together as Rey does her best to hold in the last lungful of clean air she’d gotten right before Ben appeared.

Her throat closes up, her lungs burn, her eyes water – and finally, finally, Rey is forced to inhale.

The effect is instantaneous and devastating, heaven and hell rolled into one as her blood heats up and her skin itches and her toes curl and her stomach cramps. If she were a braver woman, if she were a dumber woman, she might risk a glance at Ben to see how he’s faring, to check if he’s noticed her reaction to his scent. Instead, Rey nods along as she squints at the screen and discreetly presses her thighs together as tightly as she can.

If this keeps up, she might need to start keeping a change of underwear at work.

Mercifully, the meeting is short and to the point as it always is with Leia. She turns her back to the screen, Poe clicks out of the slideshow, and chairs start scraping against the floor as everyone prepares to get back to work.

“One last thing,” Leia says before the first brave soul can ask Ben to stand aside and stop blocking the only exit from this packed room. Oddly enough, he tenses at the sound of Leia’s voice, the only noticeable bit of body language she’s noticed since he walked into the room.

“I’m sure by now you’ve all met our newest addition, my son Ben Solo.”

A round of hushed murmurs sweeps across the room, the cat finally out of the bag for the scant few who hadn’t thought to make the connection between Leia’s husband and the newcomer. Out of the corner of her eye Rey catches Ben crossing his arms over his chest and drawing himself up to his full height, almost as if he’s _daring_ anyone in this room to comment on his parentage.

None of this comes as news to Rey, of course – Finn had informed her of their new addition’s connection to the big boss before she’d even _known_ there was to be a new addition – but for just a second the unexpected reminder slams into her hard enough to take her mind off her current situation. Instead a bolt of horror shoots up her spine at the belated realization that she’s lusting after _her boss’s son_ , and Rey thinks that’s almost as bad as the biological compatibility thing and all that it hints at.

“I’m very happy to finally have Ben with us after all these years of using my motherly guilt-tripping skills against him,” Leia jokes with a raspy laugh, but the joyful twinkle in her eyes is clear for anyone to see as she gives her son a soft, fond smile.

Ben ducks his head almost shyly, a small smile playing on his lips, and Rey’s heart jolts as if someone’s fashioned endearment into a blade and plunged it into her chest. A fresh wave of slick quickly ruins the moment, and she can barely hear Leia’s next words over the faint, panicky ringing in her ears.

“–looks like I brought him aboard to do my dirty work, and I completely understand why some of you feel this way. Unfortunately, the truth is that we’re just long overdue for some serious downsizing, and this would have happened with or without Ben around.”

Panic of an entirely different breed settles into her bones as Rey finally makes sense of Leia’s words and the sudden tension that’s settled over the room. Realistically she knows she’s probably safe – she was promoted just last month and easily does the work of three regular employees – but the part of her that’s never found a home that _wasn’t_ taken from her in some painful way freaks out anyway.

There are times when the light in Leia’s eyes makes her look twenty years younger, and then there are times when her shoulders slump under the weight of the world and she looks ten years older than she really is; this is the latter. “I wish you all the best these next two weeks,” Leia sighs before she plasters on a sincere smile. “And please know that whatever comes next is in no way reflective of your worth as an employee or a person, because I can honestly say that all of you are so, _so_ appreciated here and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t let a single one of you go.”

A faint _aww_ fills the room amidst a smattering of polite claps, and just seconds later Leia ends the meeting with a strained smile and a dismissive wave of her hand. Ben is the first one out, wrenching the door open with such force that it slams into the wall as he leaves. Rey gives him a short head start, counts to ten in her head before she joins the small crowd filing out of the room and shoulders her way past the bottleneck forming at the door. In her haste to get to the nearest bathroom, though, she fails to notice that she’s moving fast enough to catch up to him, and an accidental shove from a colleague who’s in as much of a rush as the rest of them sends her crashing into the one person in this building she really, really can’t afford to touch.

Ben’s hands instinctively wrap around her shoulders to steady her, and even through the fabric of her sleeves his touch _burns_. She stumbles backwards as a pained hiss escapes her, her inner muscles desperately contracting around thin air, and he emits a matching sharp inhale as his hands drop back down to his sides and his breathing grows heavy.

“Sorry, didn’t see you–”

“This is getting _ridiculous,_ ” Ben snarls, more to himself than her, and quickly looks left and right before he practically _sprints_ to the nearest door and opens it. “We need to talk,” he declares, and disappears into the darkened meeting room without waiting for her reply.

Rey does a quick sweep of the hallway – it’s somehow emptied out in the last few seconds, everyone in a rush to get back to work or head out for lunch – and throws caution to the wind. He’s right, after all: this _is_ getting ridiculous, and maybe talking about it will bring them closer to the elusive solution.

There’s always the obvious solution, but as far as Rey’s concerned, that’s _not_ an option – not even as her insides retaliate for the aching emptiness with a vicious cramp.

She closes the door behind her, reaches out to turn on the lights while Ben paces the length of the room with a table between them.

“Look, clearly we can’t work together–” he starts, and the heat his presence fills her with quickly turns to ice. Between Leia’s announcement just minutes ago and the stories Finn’s told her about Ben, about his previous life working for the First Order where he couldn’t play nice with anyone and easily got rid of everyone who displeased him in any way, Rey’s brain is quick to jump to the worst case scenario.

“ _No_ ,” she snaps, stomps up to the table and slams her palms down on the glass. “I don’t care that this physically _hurts_ me, I don’t care if you can’t get any work done with me around – you are _not_ firing me for this stupid thing I didn’t even _ask_ for, it’s not my fault and there has to be some kind of law protecting me against this, so don’t even _think–_ ”

“Rey,” he says quietly, and her rant dies a sudden, undignified death as a whimper fights its way past her lips. It’s the first time he’s ever said her name, and suddenly she wants to collapse against the table and press her whole body to the cool surface of the glass because she’s _dying_ , her blood is boiling in an entirely new way and this is hell, this is the literal ninth circle of hell–

“I’m not firing you,” Ben assures her through gritted teeth, and she fights her way through the haze clouding her mind to realize that he's stopped pacing and his fingers are now curled so tightly around the table that his knuckles have gone white. Rey swears she can see tiny hairline fractures racing across the surface of the tempered glass from where he’s gripping the table. “Why would you think–?”

She’s flustered and turned on and still a bit uncertain, a bit scared, and oh this is a bad combination because for some godforsaken reason Rey hears herself saying coldly, “Well, it’s what you would have done back in First Order, isn’t it?”

Ben’s eyes narrow as he leans over the table, subconsciously moving towards her. “What do you know about First Order?” he demands in a low voice that signals danger in more than one way.

“Enough,” Rey shrugs, feigns disinterest as she casually moves away from the table, backs up incrementally until she's pressed against the door, as close to the exit as possible.

“You know _nothing_ ,” Ben rebuts forcefully, almost defensively, and Rey watches him straighten up and stalk around the table with equal measures of dread and heat pooling low in her belly. He comes to a stop right where she was just a minute ago, leans against the table and crosses his arms, stares at her with a clear challenge flashing in his eyes.

So naturally Rey does the stupidest thing possible and falls for it _._ “I know all about _Kylo Ren,_ ” she spits, all thoughts of a swift exit quickly abandoned. “I know how selfish you were, how you’d get people fired for the smallest, stupidest things, like a petty, spiteful _child_ who–”

In the blink of an eye Ben closes the distance between them, cages her in with both hands on either side of her head. “Could a _child_ do this to you, sweetheart?” he whispers, and everything moves in slow-motion as he brings one shaking hand up to brush her hair back from her neck and ghost a fingertip over her inflamed, desperate skin. “Could a child make you fall apart in my arms with just…” he leans in and Rey wants him _closer_ , “one…” he drops his head and her traitorous hands rise of their own accord, slide into his hair just as his lips find her mating gland, “touch?”

“ _Ben_ ,” she gasps as a feeling of rightness washes over her, as her hormones demand more, more lips and tongue and _teeth_. Her fingers instinctively, roughly yank at his hair, and Rey registers a broken moan muffled against her neck in response. Good. _Good._ Let him be as desperate as she is, let him discover exactly what he’ll be going without–

–because the second she breaks free of this madness, Rey rips her hands out of his hair, shoves at his chest until he stumbles into the table. Ben is slow to look up at her, blinking the haze away, and when he does his eyes are dark with a need that matches the one in her soul.

It’s the kind of thing that could easily consume you whole, and Rey has no plans of letting it. So she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to center herself, ignores the way his scent sets her nerves on fire all over again, and quickly reaches for the doorknob.

“Let’s…” her voice is a barely audible rasp, and she has to clear her throat and try again while Ben continues to beg her with his eyes. “Let’s go back to ignoring each other,” Rey manages in one breath, and quickly steps out of the room.

 

* * *

 

“I’m not going to work today,” Ben announces blearily when Rey gently shakes him awake at seven in the morning as per their usual weekday wake-up routine.

“What?” Rey yawns and collapses back into bed, undoing what little progress she’d made in pulling herself into a sitting position. “Why not?”

He reaches for her out of habit, pulls her back against him even as his eyes remain closed. “Rut leave,” Ben mumbles into her neck, nosing at her gland in that absentminded, comfortable way that makes her want things they’re not ready for.

Rey struggles in his arms, finally turns around to find him slowly opening his eyes as he frowns at her in confusion. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, hooking one leg over his. “I could’ve given them early notice. Plus we wouldn’t have had to wake up at seven.”

Ben blinks at her for the longest time. “Rey,” he finally says, the sleepiness in his voice replaced by something more awake, more careful. “If you disappear during my rut just weeks after I called in sick during your heat, people will figure it out.”

“So?” she shrugs, because in all honesty a part of her had forgotten that no one else knows, that she’d seen this as some shameful secret to be kept hidden away in the beginning. It’s been a year since then, and there are days when Rey can’t believe how fast time’s flown by but there are also days when she can’t believe they haven’t been together their whole lives. Ben being in her life just… makes sense in a way that nothing else ever has or ever will, and it’s hard to remember that there was a time when she didn’t want this, didn’t want him.

“So,” he echoes, drags himself up to sit against the headboard. “Everyone will know. My mother. Your friends.”

She pulls herself up to mirror him, takes Ben’s hands in her own. “I don’t care,” Rey says softly, offers him a gentle smile when she catches his eye. “You were there for me when I needed you. I want to be here for you.”

“Sweetheart,” Ben sighs, and she knows the battle is won when he leans in and presses his forehead to hers even as he continues to question her. “Are you sure about this? You know what they’ll say about us, what they say about… about Alphas and Omegas.”

He whispers that last bit like it’s something shameful, something not to be brought up in broad daylight. In a way they’ve treated it like that, danced around the foundation of their relationship and never, ever referred to each other by designation outside of bed.

But it’s been a year.

Rey looks at him, at her Ben, and thinks of the way her heart flips when she opens her eyes first thing in the morning and finds him with her, of the way she feels with him and around him, of all the ways they’re perfect for each other that don’t involve him being an Alpha and her being an Omega. She looks at her Ben, and knows that their relationship is so much more than what it started out as.

“Let them say whatever they want,” she decides, presses a quick kiss to his lips and delights in the way a smile instantly blooms on his face. “I don’t care about any of it,” Rey assures him, slipping one hand free from Ben’s to cup his jaw. “I just care about you.”

A part of her does care, but – she cares that she won’t have to hide her smile behind her hand whenever Ben walks past at work, cares that she’ll be able to hold his hand and rest her head on his shoulder when the team goes out for lunch, cares that this moves them into new territory.

All she cares about right now, though, is the way Ben hauls her into his lap in response to her little declaration, pulls her in for a proper kiss and breaks away only to pull her nightshirt over her head.

“When does it start?” Rey asks as she hooks her fingers into the waistband of his boxers and Ben automatically lifts his hips to help her along. He’d only stopped taking his blockers around the same time she’d traded her suppressant implant for a basic contraceptive shot, but even on blockers he’d gone through yearly ruts, giving him the added advantage of being far more familiar with this process than she’d been with her heat.

“In a few hours, probably,” Ben answers distractedly, holding her in place as he kicks off his boxers. “Honestly, though?” he gives her a grin, the boyish one that she’s only recently grown familiar with and loves with all her soul. “I’ve felt a few hours away since the day we met.”

How does he _do_ that, make something both endearingly sappy and unbearably hot? Rey rolls off his lap and onto her back, hooks her arms around Ben’s neck and pulls him down with her. “That was a ridiculous day,” she huffs, thinking of how negatively they’d both reacted to their instant attraction.

Ben hovers above her, hands on either side of her shoulders as he looks down at her. “If someone had told you then that we’d end up here… how would you have reacted?”

“Not well,” Rey says honestly as she reaches up, slides her fingers into his hair. “I was… god, Ben, I was terrified. And you know why, you were too,” she reminds him. “But… but I’m glad this is how it played out. I’m glad we ended up here.” Her voice has grown soft, and she’s probably wearing the most ridiculous, lovesick smile possible, but that’s okay because he is too.

“Me too, sweetheart,” Ben murmurs right as he lowers himself so that every inch of them is pressed together. She loves it when they’re like this – her Alpha a comfortable, familiar presence above her, reassuring without being suffocating.

Rey uses her hands in his hair to pull him in for a kiss, wraps her legs around him and sighs happily when Ben shifts to balance his weight on one hand while the other snakes between them to part her folds.

“ _Fuck_ , Rey–” he mumbles against her lips like he always does, as if after a year together and all the chemistry in the world he’s still awed by the fact that she wants him too, that she exists at all. Rey hums into their kiss, a wordless reassurance and acknowledgement all in one, and is all too happy to lose herself in the moment until the shrill ringing of her phone bursts their bubble.

“Tell me again why we need two alarms?” Ben grumbles lightly as he rolls off her so that Rey can grab her phone from the nightstand and shut off her 7:15.

“Because _someone_ has a habit of getting distracted whenever I try to get us out of bed the first time around,” Rey reminds him teasingly as she unlocks her phone and taps on her email.

Ben turns on his side to grin at her. “Well, maybe if you weren’t so distracting I wouldn’t _get_ so distracted,” he retorts. “What’re you doing? Come back here,” he frowns when Rey doesn’t immediately put her phone away.

“Just a minute,” she assures him. “I need to let work know I’m not coming in either. How many days off did you get?”

“Three,” Ben tells her as he turns to his own nightstand for the bottle of water he keeps there, offering it to Rey after a swig. “That’s the standard amount, usually. What are you going to tell them?”

She could probably call in sick the way he did during her heat, but why waste perfectly good sick days? Rey hands the bottle back to Ben and wraps up her email as he returns it to the nightstand. “That my partner is in rut,” she shrugs, deliberately casual as she puts her phone away and turns back to him.

It’s not quite the m-word, but it’s still _something_ , especially in an email to work. Ben smiles, holds his arms wide open and pulls her on top of him.

“I like the sound of that,” he whispers against her lips.

“Yeah,” Rey smiles, thinking of the future that awaits them. “Me too.”

 

* * *

 

The final straw comes a month after their confrontation in the meeting room.

“Hey!” Rey calls out when Ben rushes past her, finally giving in to her natural inclination to chase after him rather than run away from him. He turns to her with a carefully guarded mask, feigns disinterest and impatience as if her proximity isn’t setting every cell of his body on fire.

Two can play at that game, Rey decides, and takes a vicious joy in the telling way his Adam’s apple bobs when she steps into his personal space. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” she demands before Ben can speak, and his eyes widen in shock for a split second before he catches himself.

“What now, Miss Niima?” he sighs, takes the excuse of crossing his arms to subtly move backwards a step.

“Oh, don’t you _Miss Niima_ me–” she seethes, only to be interrupted by a faint squeak from somewhere behind her. Rey turns just in time to see a Beta colleague make a one-eighty and scurry down the hallway in the direction he came from, and it’s only then that she realizes they’re out in the open.

She gingerly pinches the fabric of Ben’s rolled-up sleeve between her fingers and tugs at him. “This way.”

“All this trouble just to get me alone?” Ben chuckles as he follows her down the hallway, and the smugness in his voice combined with the low rasp of his laugh just–

Rey snaps herself out of it, yanks him into a somewhat secluded corner before she crosses her arms and goes toe to toe with him. “The _entire_ networking department? Really? Are you just _that_ much of an asshole that you’re willing to fire seven people over what is clearly a piss-poor excuse for you to get rid of your father?”

The teasing light in his eyes, the slight curve of his lips – all of it drains away as he draws himself up to his full height and glares down at her. “It’s an obsolete, overpaid department. Maybe the consultancy needed a dedicated networking team when it was first started, but it’s made more than enough connections since. So I can either let go of a department that’s outlived its usefulness, or I can make the cuts somewhere else, from a department that’s actually _useful_. What would _you_ suggest, sweetheart?” he sneers, and god, she just wants to punch him and knock him down and possibly straddle him.

“ _Don’t_ call me that,” Rey snaps, irritated at both herself and him. “And don’t even try to pretend that this was purely a professional decision. You’ve hated your father since the day you got here–”

Ben ducks his head and mumbles something under his breath, and it’s out of character enough for her irritation to be momentarily replaced by confusion.

“What?”

“I _said,_ ” he huffs, looks down at his shoes, “I don’t hate him.”

Bewilderment slows her down, softens her enough for her squared shoulders to slump as she tilts her head and considers the unexpected sight in front of her. Ben’s… not relaxed, never that, but certainly nowhere near as tense as he usually is around her. Something about the way his eyes refuse to meet hers, the way he’s the slightest bit curled into himself, screams resignation at her.

It’s not unwarranted, his assumption that nothing he says will change her mind. After all, it’s been six weeks since Ben showed up and ruined her – ruined her _life_ , that is – and she’s proven herself to be remarkably disagreeable since, butting heads with him at every possible occasion because all of that tension has to go _somewhere_ , and she’d rather channel it into bickering with him while Poe and Leia watch them like the world’s most fascinating ping pong match than use it to fuel this _thing_ between them.

But just this once… “Then why?” Rey asks quietly, gently enough for Ben to slowly raise his head and meet her with something like tentative hope in his eyes. “Why all of the…” she thinks of the way he leaves a room the second his father enters it, the way he ignores Han’s attempts at conversations and brushes past him with a little too much force, the way he undermines the older man in every meeting they’re forced to share, and encompasses it with a vague wave of her hand and a furrowed brow.

Ben shakes his head with a sigh. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” she retorts unthinkingly, _stupidly,_ and the second his lips twitch Rey knows she’s fucked up.

“Careful there, sweetheart,” he murmurs with a smirk, and the heat of his gaze sets her skin on fire, raises all of the little hairs on the back of her neck and her arms. “That almost sounds like an offer.”

“God,” Rey huffs, rolls her eyes and takes a step backwards even as her body aches for him. “You’re _impossible_ ,” she declares, and makes to turn on her heel and walk away.

It’s their pattern, after all. Creeping closer, and closer, and closer in the world’s most ridiculous game of chicken until one of them realizes the very real danger they’re in and decides to back down.

Lately, she’s been the one doing all the backing down. Something tells her that maybe Ben isn’t quite interested in the game anymore, that he would draw more satisfaction from luring her in than watching her lose.

He still chuckles faintly every time she runs away, though, and oh does it grate on her nerves but for this, for the sake of _everything_ , Rey is willing to swallow her pride and be the chicken every time.

Only this time, Ben doesn’t let her.

One second she’s turning away from him and the next he’s pulled her into his arms, warm fingers curled low on her hip while the other hand slowly, slowly makes it way towards her neck.

“And yet, Rey,” Ben murmurs, staring at her like he can’t quite believe she’s real, like he expects her to disappear into thin air any second now. “And yet,” he sighs, and ducks his head to replace his fingers with his mouth.

One brush of his lips against her gland and she’s gone, she’s tired and she _wants_ and how futile is this, anyway, denying her biology, denying herself, denying _him_ as if he isn’t the only thing she’s ever wanted. Rey gives in with a shuddery exhale, lets her spine melt into a useless puddle and trusts Ben to hold her upright.

“We really need to do something about this,” she whispers with her chin on top of his head, raises one shaky hand to finally tangle itself in his hair only to find that it’s as soft as she dreamed it would be.

Ben scrapes his teeth across her gland, applying only the slightest bit of pressure. “Please,” he mumbles against her skin. “Please, Rey, _please._ ”

Biology and society dictate that she should be the one begging him, that he should’ve thrown her over his shoulder and hauled her off to his home by now, that they should’ve given in to each other the day they met. Biology and society, Rey thinks as she lifts her head and uses the hand in Ben’s hair to pull him away from her neck, are exactly why she didn’t give in.

But Ben, Ben the Alpha who walked away from her when he should’ve done anything but, Ben the Alpha who lets _her_ walk away from him time after time, Ben who looks at her now desperate and pleading but if she were to deny him again he’d let her, he’d take his big, warm hands off her back and watch her leave and never corner her or confront her–

Ben is why she gives in.

“No one can know,” she warns him, heart in her throat as she takes them past the point of no return.

“Of course,” Ben nods quickly, eagerly.

“It’s just a one-time thing,” Rey stipulates even as a voice in the back of her mind chants _liar liar liar._

He hesitates for a moment, but then– “If that’s what you want.”

She nods, just once. “It is. Just one time, to get it out of our systems. And then we can put this behind us and move on.”

It’s laughable, it’s ridiculous, it’s sheer _idiocy_ to think she can get this out of her system when it _is_ her system, to think that the universe and the fates and their physiology perfectly aligned so that they could have just one amazing fuck and then go their separate ways.

But then Ben nods again, curls his fingers around her hips and squeezes, and it can’t be that ridiculous if _two_ perfectly sensible and intelligent people are agreeing to it, right?

So she yanks him down to her and finally, _finally_ kisses him, pretends the world isn’t falling to pieces around her as she bites down on his lower lip and eagerly swipes at the bead of blood emerging from her cut, her _mark._ “My place is ten minutes away,” Rey manages to inform him between kisses.

Ben answers by pulling her back in for one final kiss before he wrenches himself away with a pained groan.

“Lead the way, sweetheart.”

 

* * *

 

“Please,” Ben whines, his skin clammy with sweat, his hair plastered to his face, his eyes wide and desperate and trusting as she releases him from her mouth with a wet _pop_. “Please, Rey, need more, need you–”

It’s her favorite thing about his rut – how soft and needy he gets, how he trusts her to take care of him. Her Alpha lies spreadeagled on their bed, fists clenching around the headboard’s slats in desperation, begging and waiting even though rut is supposed to drive him out of his mind, is supposed to drown out all consideration for her wants and needs with his own single-minded purpose.

“You have me, love,” Rey promises him, moves from between his legs to settle her own on either side of his hips and slowly lower herself down. He shakes from the effort of keeping his hips still as she takes him into her, letting her set the pace even now because some part of his brain still remembers that she must be sore after three days of taking his knot more times than she can keep track of.

Ben removes his hands from the headboard, settles them over her hips as she begins to move. “Want you,” he babbles, looking up at her like she hung the moon and the stars and everything in between. “Just you, always you, _fuck_ , Rey, so good, so perfect for me, made for me, I love you I _love_ you I–” he chokes on a desperate sob as she stills, rolls his hips to try and get her to move again.

“Please, sweetheart, _please_ –”

Rey leans forward, stretches over him to push his hair back from his face and press a kiss to his heart. “Just a second,” she assures him, locks her legs around his waist and twines her arms around his neck before she carefully rolls them over.

“I’ve got you,” Rey murmurs as Ben drops his head to her shoulder with a moan and gives an experimental thrust, the last vestiges of his self-control disappearing in light of his newly-acquired control over this, over her. “I’ve got you, Alpha,” she sighs, closes her eyes as Ben begins to move at a frenzied pace she doesn’t even try to keep up with.

She whispers a string of pretty words into his ear instead, digs her nails into his shoulders to anchor herself as he grows closer and closer to the end. “Just like that, love, so good, my Alpha, my mate–”

He comes with a muffled cry against her neck, breath warm on her gland. It’s not lost on her that the word _mate_ was what finally pushed him over the edge, the way it has for the last three days.

But then he’s stretching her in the most delicious way, and all she can focus on is him inside her, his spend filling her up, _this is right this is what we’re meant for this is how we start a family–_

It’s just harmless Omega babbling, the kind she’s grown familiar with ever since she went off her suppressants, and the birth control shot she got a year ago sets her mind at ease as she comes down from her high to find Ben rolling them onto their sides.

Rey loves him, loves the idea of their life together and the years that await and the family that will come, but one step at a time. And the next step, for them–

“You called me your mate again,” Ben whispers into her hair as Rey curls one leg around his back and takes his knot as deep as it’ll go.

“You liked it,” she mumbles defensively against his bare shoulder, sighing in contentment when the familiar weight of his hand settles on her lower back, pulling her as close as she can possibly be.

Ben huffs a silent laugh against her temple, presses a kiss to her heated skin. “I _love_ it,” he assures her. “But Rey…” God, the way he _looks_ at her, all barely concealed hope as he puts his heart in her hands. “Rey, I need to know.”

The thing is, on the first day of his rut the word had slipped past her lips entirely by accident, just another one of those things she knew would please her Alpha. Rey keeps a careful catalogue of these things, uses it to her advantage whenever he’s in rut; it’s why she finds herself begging him to put a baby in her every three months even though they’ve both decided that kids aren’t in the cards just yet.

So at first… well, at first it was just like the baby thing. But then Rey said it again, and again, and while Ben napped to recover his strength she’d gotten lost inside her own head until she decided that maybe, just maybe, they’re finally ready.

And now here they are.

“I think,” Rey says carefully, reaches out to tuck a lock of hair behind Ben’s ear before she cups his cheek. He instinctively turns into her touch and nuzzles her palm, and his gesture sends a tidal wave of fondness and adoration and warmth washing over her, and Rey, Rey can’t imagine ever living without any of this.

“I think this is something we should discuss when you’re not in rut,” she smiles, an answer in its own way if Ben’s grin is anything to go by.

.  
.  
.

When she wakes up the next morning, one arm nestled under her pillow and the other draped around Ben’s waist, the first thing Rey does is sniff at the air.

“It’s over,” Ben informs her quietly, opening his eyes to give her a sleepy smile, the one that makes her want to burrow deeper into her pillow and him and their bed so that she’ll never have to leave.

She hums in acknowledgement, shifts closer to him. “That’s good. I’ve got something to ask you,” Rey announces through a yawn.

Ben’s lips quirk into a knowing grin. “Funny, so do I.”

And she knows, the way she knew he was meant to be hers the second they met, exactly what he’s about to ask. An unfamiliar giddiness takes hold of Rey as she playfully suggests, “On the count of three?”

“All right,” Ben laughs, taken aback by her suggestion but happy to play along all the same. God, she loves his laugh, loves the way it makes his eyes crinkle, loves everything about this man.

They lock eyes, the pair of them grinning like idiots, and count in sync.

“One… two… three–”

“Be my mate?”

“Be my wife?”

Ben lifts the hand between their bodies, holds up a ring he must’ve retrieved before she woke up. It’s not at all the question she was expecting, but Rey–

Rey laughs and nods and kisses him until the ring is lost and forgotten in the tangled mess of their sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> It only took me two whole weeks to write this disaster, no big deal.
> 
> As usual, this is nowhere near what I originally envisioned and I’m not all that pleased with it, but it’s time to let go. I hope that this was a fun read if nothing else, and I’m sorry if the back-and-forth jumps were jarring; the story just wouldn’t let itself be told any other way. To avoid confusion, I did mess around with some of the usual ABO details, especially re: how suppressants work. It deviates from the norm a bit, but then again this whole fic is one big deviation because ya girl can’t smut to save her life.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this or have any thoughts you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!


End file.
